News and analysis from the project "INTEGRATION POLICIES: WHO BENEFITS?"

Generation shift: MIPEX used for and by Italian-born children

Written by Thomas Huddleston, MIPEX Research Coordinator, Co-author and Policy Analyst, Migration Policy Group

Italian politicians and the Italian-born children of immigrants are using MIPEX to support campaigns for automatic ius soli as in other European countries of immigration.

Is support building for citizenship reform?

Italian-born children of migrants can only declare themselves Italian after 18 years with legal registration and uninterrupted residence. Authorities, trying to introduce some flexibility, cannot overcome inevitable administrative problems. Knowing no other country but Italy as their own, Italian-born students are removed from classes according to new 30% non-citizens’ quota. Their residence is easily interrupted by spending too long with family abroad. MIPEX III: Italy

I’ve been thrilled to monitor how Italian legislators and immigrant youth themselves are using the MIPEX tool to campaign for automatic ius soli citizenship, following European-wide reform trends.

The proposed law mentioned by MEP Salatto is the Sarubbi-Granata bill. Several bills have been proposed, following birthright citizenship trends in Europe, according to EUDO-Citizenship–the authoritative online observatory on citizenship. My Italian presentation and blog entry assessed Italy’s foreign residents and their children would see a slightly better future as Italian citizens if the Italy passed citizenship reform and caught up with other European immigration countries. My unofficial impact assessment compared the Sarubbi-Granata bill to legislation in other established immigration countries:

The Bill’s eligibility provisions resemble those in neighbouring Greece and Portugal, whose reforms helped them transform from countries of emigration to immigration. The procedures that once only benefited descendants of Italian emigrants would open immigrants who have learned basic Italian and to their children who know no other country than Italy as their home. The Bill’s conditions (39) and security (64) provisions draws on trends from the more restrictive Western European countries towards more integration requirements and more grounds for rejection.

Is support building for citizenship reform among the Italian public, politicians, and immigrants?

MIPEX users in Italy should let us know. The rest should keep following to find out.